


The Revenants

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Series: The Last of Us/Critical Role Universe [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Last of Us
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cowboys, Gen, Guns, I can already tell the tags on this are going to be a trip, Natural Disasters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Zombies, post-apocalypse Texans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-03-07 22:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18882574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: It's been months since Molly and Yasha left Pittsburgh behind, and they've given up searching for their group. Finding the Fireflies doesn't seem like a likely option, not by themselves, but it's the only one they've got. To make matters worse, while they're busy dodging Infected monsters and trigger-happy humans, their pasts start catching up to them.





	The Revenants

**Author's Note:**

> Updates for this one are going to be fewer and further in between than they were for my last one, since the storyline and supporting characters are original.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! It's been more than half a year since I last updated this, but I wanted to give it another shot instead of just leaving all those future events floating in limbo. I have plans.
> 
> EDIT: I deleted the first couple of chapters and adjusted this one and hopefully the plot will move a little faster now.

He woke to darkness. Not just the darkness of the inside of his eyelids, but a horrible, pressing blackness all around him. He managed to take a breath, but it was shallow and it tasted like dirt. He was underground. Buried.

He couldn’t lift his arms. But he managed to twist, writhing until he could work his arms up through the dirt and he felt something cold and wet drip onto his face. Mud? Was there water? Was it raining above him? He couldn’t hear anything, but either way, rain meant up, and up meant _air,_ so he started digging. He couldn’t tell how much progress he was making, though, and it was difficult and tiring. He wasn’t very strong. He began to lose confidence that he was digging in the right direction. What if he was going downwards? Or—or sideways? What if he suffocated before he could get out? His skull was burning and his breathing came faster and the panic was still building, and he was about to start screaming for help when his hand broke out of the earth.

The shock broke him out of his terror, and he clawed upwards with renewed energy. The dim light grew brighter and brighter until, suddenly, there was sky. He lurched towards it and his head broke through the ground, and he gasped. The smell of rain and rotting plants immediately filled his lungs, but it was a welcome relief from the wet soil. Immediately he took to coughing, hacking, expelling the earth from his chest, but he at least had the presence of mind to drag himself the rest of the way out of the ground. Then, for good measure, he crawled a few feet away before he collapsed onto his side.

He coughed a few more times, and although there was no more dirt coming up, every breath he took felt gritty. His tongue tasted like mud. But although his breathing gradually slowed, and the adrenaline faded, his still couldn’t make himself move. The air wasn’t all that cold, but he shivered, and then shivered again, like fever chills. The rain felt good. Cool.

Brush broke somewhere behind him. Something was approaching, though he wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t gather the energy to turn his head and look, and so he just laid there, heart pounding, as the noises grew closer and then a hand came down on his shoulder.

“Molly, wake up.”

There was no hand on his shoulder. He pried his eyes open and found darkness again. Panic seized him again for a moment before he noticed a flicker out of the corner of his eye, and he realized that the darkness above him was a ceiling. He was on his back on the floor inside a building. A house. Something. He groggily turned his head towards the flicker.

There was a woman sitting a few paces away, on the other side of a small lantern that sat on the floor. She was tall and broad, with thick muscles that had made many people think twice about bothering her in the past. Her hair was black but whitened at the ends, and the charcoal around her eyes made her irises—one blue, one violet—even more vivid. One arm was down at her side, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of one of his swords. Her shoulders were tense. It took his sleep-addled mind a moment to come up with her name. “…Yasha,” he said. His tongue felt thick.

She studied him. “Are you okay?” she asked, her tone difficult to parse.

He took a shallow breath. “I… think so. What happened?” His eyes were hot and his whole body ached.

She didn’t relax. “You’ve been asleep all night and most of the morning,” she told him. “You… uh, you had a fever.”

“Did I?” He pushed himself over onto his back—he didn’t think he could sit up quite yet—and put a hand to his forehead.

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you know where we are?”

He thought hard. “…Texas,” he said aloud. “Near Dallas. We're trying to track down our friends.”

Yasha nodded. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

Again, he tried to remember. “We ducked into a grocery store,” he recalled. “To get out of the sun. There were… Infected. We tried to get out through a back door, and there were spores. I fell and lost my mask, and… we got away, and then… I passed out?”

She nodded, and relaxed. “Are you all right?”

He nodded slowly, running through what he could remember from the very beginning—meeting the rest of the group two years ago, relearning how to talk and read a little, traveling, losing track of everyone in Pittsburgh… his name. His name was Mollymauk Tealeaf. He had his name, and his memories. It seemed like everything was still there. Okay.

“Okay,” he said aloud. “I… seem to be all right.” He pushed himself up on his elbows and, with great effort, managed to get upright. It was dark. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. The sun went down a while ago. But, you have been sleeping for a long time. We should eat before we move again."

It had been a long time since they’d lost track of their group in Pittsburgh. They’d tracked their friends a ways southwest, but soon, the trail went cold. They’d kept going that direction for over two months, hoping they’d find something, but they hadn’t. Finally, they’d given up and started searching for the Fireflies on their own. Fall had passed with no real luck, and they’d spent the Winter mostly huddling in abandoned farmhouses on the Plains. Yasha had taught Molly a few songs she’d known when she was younger.

When the cold started to lift in mid-March, they’d started looking for more leads on the Fireflies. Their wandering led them South, into Texas. With food supplies running low, they were headed for the nearest large city: Fort Worth. Dallas was an option, too—the two cities weren’t far apart—but Dallas had walled itself off, and getting in wouldn’t be easy.

They ate some of their rations—they were going to need to get more soon—and packed up. Molly had to put his hand on the wall so he could struggle to his feet. He only wobbled a little, and Yasha, thankfully, did not move to try and catch him. That would’ve been a blow to his ego. He made sure his two swords were secured at his sides, and Yasha strapped the sawed-off I-beam she’d found last week onto her back, alongside her bag.  The land around here was flatter than plywood, so there wasn’t any way to get a good sense of what was where unless you climbed one of the buildings or a stunted, water-starved tree. And even then, you couldn’t see very far. But Yasha had better eyes than Molly, and so it was Molly who waited on the ground while Yasha confirmed they were still on the right path.

Their course decided, they started walking again. They stuck close to the buildings, so Yasha could look around corners and make sure the coast was clear. Molly kept an eye out behind them. It was quiet, though. There wasn’t a lot of water around here, so it made a certain amount of sense that people would have moved off a while ago. Less people meant less Infected, and less to keep an eye out for.

But there were _so_ many buildings, and they were so close together but still far enough apart that a crowd of Infected could have been waiting around every corner. Walking around between them was nerve-wracking. They weren’t close enough together for Molly and Yasha to climb around on the roofs—these cities were built out rather than up, and they gave a new meaning to the word _sprawling._

 “Really wishing we had a car,” Molly remarked. Back when they were with the group, there had been a pickup truck. Gustav and Desmond had sat in the front, and everyone else piled into the truck bed. Molly had liked the feeling of the wind on his face while they drove. But they’d lost the pickup when they got ambushed in Pittsburgh.

“Maybe we’ll find one that works.” Yasha eyed a pickup as they walked past it. There were a lot of pickups around here. What was it with Texans and trucks? And cowboys. God, the cowboys.

They walked in silence for a while. Molly started to get a headache from squinting. He had good eyesight, but the darkness made it difficult for him to pick out shapes in the distance. And shapes nearby. Twice he tripped over a pothole that he'd thought was just a stain or a patch of tar. He was watching ahead so intently that he didn't notice when Yasha stopped walking. “Molly,” she murmured. “I hear something.”

He turned and looked at her. She had her head tilted back, listening. He looked around, trying to pick up on whatever she’d heard, but there was just the wind between the buildings and the ambient noise from the crickets.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said, keeping his voice down anyway.

She didn’t respond. “Hoofbeats,” she whispered. “There’s horses a few blocks over.”

“Any people?” Molly whispered back.

And just then, he heard a voice echoing off the bricks. He couldn’t make out any words, but there were definitely words.

He made a face. “Why would people be out here in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t really think I want to find out.” Yasha peered around the corner and quickly pulled back. “I see them,” she whispered. “Two of them, on horseback. I think they have flashlights.”

“All right,” Molly said. “So, we move back, quietly…”

He was halfway through a step backwards when his heel hit a discarded soda can and it clattered away. It was possibly the loudest sound he’d ever heard.

A flashlight beam lanced down the street in front of them. “Who’s there?” a man called.

“We should run,” Yasha whispered to Molly.

He didn’t have to be told again. He turned and sprinted away with Yasha right on his heels.

“Hey!” a second voice shouted after him. “Hey, you! Stop!”

They did _not_ stop. Molly vaulted over a concrete barrier, headed across the highway. There was a housing development up ahead. Odds were they’d be able to find somewhere to hide there. An attic, or something.

Behind them, the horses jumped the barrier. They were way closer than Molly had expected them to be. His throat burned. He was about to leap over a second barrier when he heard a whistling noise and something yanked him backwards. His feet flew out in front of him and he landed hard in the dirt, whacking his chin against the concrete. He looked up and saw Yasha also on the ground, a few paces behind him. He hadn’t heard her go down. There was a rope wrapped around her, too, but it had caught her higher—it had pinned her arms at her waist. The one around Molly’s waist hadn’t caught his arms, and it had gotten him at his hips.

One of the flashlight beams found Molly’s face. He squinted against it. He couldn’t make out much of their captors. Just those dumb hats.

“Shit,” said one of them. “What the hell are you two doing out here at oh-dark thirty?”

“Running from crazy people on horses,” Molly spat.

His captor snorted. He sounded younger than the first man. “Hey, we aren’t the ones runnin’ our asses around on foot in the middle of the night.”

The other one spoke up. “You two got names?”

“Nope.”  
            The first one laughed. “Well, strangers, it wouldn’t be very Christian of us to leave y’all out here on your own. My wife hasn’t had new guests in a while, and if that coat is any indication, I’ll bet you and her would get along just fine. Care to come along with us? Our shift’s just about up.”

“Dad,” hissed the younger one. “We can’t just bring random people back to the camp.”

“Well, that’s too bad, cuz I just offered our two friends here some dinner and a bed for the night.” He looked over at Yasha. “What do you say, ma’am? I promise we don’t bite, we were just out on patrol and you two gave us a little scare. No harm done. An’ if you prefer, we can just let you go.”  
            Yasha looked over at Molly. They hadn’t had an actual bed in a long time. Molly had actually never had one, that he could remember. And if these people were just loons with lassos, then maybe they’d be easier to take down from closer up.

Molly met Yasha’s eyes, and they made a silent agreement. At the first sign of trouble, they were going to run.

“That sounds good,” Molly said. “Do we have to walk there tied up like this?”

The older man snorted. “Of course not! Derek, keep an eye on ‘em while I climb down.”

The younger man—Derek—eyed Molly mistrustfully and pulled a gun out of a strap under his jacket, though thankfully, he didn’t point it at anyone. Just held it ready while his dad slid out of the saddle and loosened the knots so Molly and Yasha could slip out.

“I figure you can ride with me,” the old man said. Now that he was off the saddle and not pointing a flashlight in Molly’s face, Molly could see that he was _old._ “And you can ride with my son, there, Miss,” he added to Yasha. “I figure you can’t weigh much more’n me, and I’ve ridden Kicker, there, with my wife before. He can handle it.”

This made Molly pause. If they were split up, it would be harder for him and Yasha to run or fight if something went wrong. But then again, if trouble rose, Derek and his dear old dad were in the same boat. It would be a mutual hostage situation. He and Yasha had had worse.

Derek didn’t look happy about it, but he grudgingly moved forward so Yasha could get on the horse behind him. It was going to be cramped in that saddle. But Yasha climbed up and got settled without much trouble. Then the old man asked Molly, “Need help gettin’ up there?”

“No, but thanks.”

“Alright.” The old man mounted up, and Molly climbed up behind him without too much trouble.

“Before we go,” Molly said. “What’s your name? You haven’t told us.”

The old man smiled, making his big white mustache curve uprwards. “I’m Hal,” he said. “And you?’

“…Molly.”

“Alright. That a nickname, or is it God-given?”

“A little of both.”

Hal laughed. “A little of both! I like that.” He turned his attention to the front and clicked his tongue. His horse started to trot forward. Derek nudged his horse up to keep pace, and the four of them set out through the streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What we need is some good old-fashioned cowboys


End file.
